Mark Billingham
Born in 1961, British author Mark Billingham has twice won the Theakston's Old Peculier Award for Best Crime Novel, and has also won a Sherlock Award for the Best Detective created by a British writer. Each of the novels featuring Detective Inspector Tom Thorne has been a Sunday Times bestseller, and Sleepyhead and Scaredy Cat were made into a hit TV series on Sky 1 starring David Morrissey as Thorne. He also writes popular stand-alone crime novels.
Mark lives in North London with his wife and two children.
The Hound's picks
THE DYING HOURS
A cluster of suicides among the elderly. Such things are not unknown to the police and the deaths are quickly dismissed by the police as routine. Only one man is convinced that something more sinister is taking place.
However, no one listens to Tom Thorne anymore. Having stepped out of line once too often, he's back in uniform and he hates it. Patronised and abused by his new colleagues, Thorne's suspicions about the suicides are dismissed by the Murder Squad he was once part of and he is forced to investigate alone.
Unable to trust anyone, Thorne must risk losing those closest to him. He must gamble with the lives of those targeted by a killer unlike any he has hunted before. A man with nothing to lose and a growing list of victims. A man with the power to make people take their own lives.
Tom Thorne returns in Billingham's most compelling thriller to date. The Dying Hours is a haunting portrait of London's dark heart, and the darker heart of a twisted killer bringing terror to its streets.
'Expertly crafted, with a nicely judged build-up of tension and a slam-dunk ending. The Dying Hours is a terrific read'
Guardian
IN THE DARK
A rainy night in London. Shots are fired into a car which swerves on to the pavement, ploughing into a bus stop. It seems that a chilling gang initiation has cost an innocent victim their life. But the reality is far more sinister...
One life is wiped out and three more are changed forever: the young man whose finger was on the trigger; an ageing gangster planning a deadly revenge, and the pregnant woman who struggles desperately to uncover the truth. Two weeks away from giving birth, how will she deal with a world where death is an occupational hazard?
In a city where violence can be random or meticulously planned, where teenage gangs clash with career criminals and where loyalty is paid for in blood, anything is possible. Secrets are uncovered as fast as bodies, and the story's final twist is as breathtakingly surprising as they come.
`Billingham produces an astonishing final twist to complete his most ambitious and most accomplished book'
Sunday Telegraph